


purple to violet, day dissolves into twilight

by saisei



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Consent Issues, Emotional Manipulation, Grief/Mourning, Impersonation, M/M, Painful Sex, Secretly a Virgin, Stabbing, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unprotected Sex, Unrequited Love, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 15:49:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20509538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/pseuds/saisei
Summary: Ignis wanted this, because the man's voice in his ear had been so like Noct's, and the hand on his arm had felt so familiar, and for that he's willing to bear... this.





	purple to violet, day dissolves into twilight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melokho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melokho/gifts).

He knows the man fucking him isn't Noct. Noct's in the crystal, safe in the hands of the gods (and if he isn't, Ignis can do _nothing_). Ignis himself is safe, most likely: he's on a mattress in a motel, someone would come if he shouted (unless they're all dead), and in any case he has all his weapons at hand. But he wanted this, because the man's voice in his ear had been so like Noct's, and the hand on his arm had felt so familiar, and for that he's willing to bear... this.

Not a quick handjob, which he's familiar with, nor a blowjob, which he's given but not received, but his clothes stripped away from him and his body pushed onto the bed and split in two by a driving cock after the most perfunctory preparation. The force and the tearing agony of it drives the breath from his lungs, fills his good eye with tears, makes him grab the edge of the mattress to stay put and resist the terror and need to flee, to save himself.

"Been a while," the man says, and Ignis lies: "Yes."

He's thirty years old, and well aware how ridiculous he was to have tried to save this experience, to have wanted it to be special, to have wanted this with Noct. It's nothing more than a simple, animal act with no magic in it; athletic prowess is more useful than sentiment. Once he can make his body relax and stop fighting the intrusion, he uses his well-trained flexibility to make the experience bearable. The beat of his heart shakes him, as if he's standing in front of a great drum; he finds it hard to hear, even though he's straining to catch every word in that voice he misses so very much.

His legs are splayed and his hips raised, like an empty vessel, and his thoughts skitter away from the question of whether he's aroused or not. His own cock is half-hard just from being fucked; he thinks he'd be able to come if he were to abandon himself and call the man _Noct_, but that would be unconscionable. He's not fanciful and never has been; no miraculous denouement is possible. So he swallows down the name together with his pride and opens himself when he's told how much he wants this, how eager he is.

Unexpectedly, as the gouging thrusts become more urgent, Ignis is caught in a wave of grief so strong his eyes burn, his mouth falls open, his throat suddenly raw to each panting breath. He wants to be done and left alone; one of his knees is pressed forward, twisting him in half, and the angle triggers sparks up his spine to dance across his vision.

"Hush," the man says, and Ignis snaps his mouth shut, mortified that his body betrayed him with unwanted pleasure. "The first time I set eyes on you, I saw nothing interesting," and it's Noct's voice up until it's not. Ignis snatches his daggers from the armiger as soon as he realizes, but his wrists are grabbed and pinned down with an unnatural strength, bones grinding together. "Nothing," the man repeats, and now his rage is unmasked, as Ignis bucks helpless in his grasp. Despite how hard he clenches, the man's cock forces its way in so deep Ignis tastes bile – and then feels the swell and pulse as seed like poison is spilled inside him. Through tight, regulated breaths be continues, "That last time you set eyes on me, however, ah – that was _delectable_."

Ignis tries to kick and bite, twisting. He cannot stand knowing Ardyn is inside him; it's unbearable, so of course he's made to endure it so long as Ardyn finds his disgust amusing. And then... the world around him seems to flex and bend. He recognizes the slipperiness of time from the train, but knowing that it's Ardyn's perverse magic helps not at all. He's dizzy and disoriented; his limbs are free and his arse is empty, he's thrown from the bed to the floor and his clothes are in his lap; he's half-dressed and all the scars on his face are torn open again; and then he's half-naked in the corridor with Noct's voice whispering after him, _Ignis, I trusted you, how could you have_. Even though the words are followed by laughter, they burn like acid right down through the flesh of him.

He dresses himself and stands straight, touching his fingers to the wall and using that as a guide to make his way – out.

His life has been guided by a simple stubbornness of nature. Some things are unthinkable to him – he would never abandon his duty – and as a corollary he must therefore accept any and all conditions that allow him to continue to serve, no matter how personally painful or humiliating. He's been brutally toyed with, and he yearns for privacy and enough drink to drown the memories. Instead he makes his way out of the motel and around the back, to the hunter station, and forces himself to speak, to ask for a medic.

She clears the common room of the people there playing cards and listening to the radio, and introduces herself as Temi. Ignis blurts out the bones of the story he's chosen to tell. He had unprotected sex, and his partner had the scourge.

"He tell you that before or after you guys were doing it?" Temi asks, putting unwanted flesh to the skeleton, commencing the process of bringing the monster to life. "There's a bed two steps to your left, go take your pants off and lie down."

Ignis has the greatest respect for medicine; it's saved far more lives than magic ever could. But he finds his reactions now frustratingly uncooperative, his control unspooled and erratic. He can barely stay still as directed, though Temi is patient and explains every step of the exam, lets him hold samples of the tools she's using so he's prepared. She says, hand pressing down right under his navel to keep him from hurting himself, that he's doing well, but he's certain he's humiliating himself.

The entire process is an excruciating exercise in mortification. He's washed clean and disinfected; he's got stitches inside him and hidden under bandages on his face; he allows her to check him all over for bites and scratches, even though he was the one reduced to such futile attacks; he listens to her talking about rape, about shock, about how she has a pamphlet that she'll read to him if he wants.

He doesn't want. He's Ignis Scientia, he's not a _victim_. He wanted to have sex, he tells her. He made that decision.

She touches his bruise-ringed wrist. "To be held down, fucked raw, and filled with infected spunk?" He swallows down a protest, and feels her shrug in irritation. "Yeah, right. But that doesn't matter. The disease got to his brain, or maybe he's always been a twisted fucker. Either way, you won't be the only one he hurts unless he's stopped."

Ignis thinks about Prompto in the cell in Gralea, and nausea sweeps through him in waves of hot and cold. Imagining Prompto in chains, he describes the man as best he can – though he knows it's futile – and remembering Prompto's hand at the small of his back, guiding him, he obeys Temi's order and calls Gladio, asking him to come back from the hunt he and Prompto are on.

"Something happened," he says. Talking hurts, and he doesn't know how to say more.

Temi leads him outside to a bench where he can sit and wait. The card players shuffle back inside, and if Ignis concentrates he can distinguish the sounds of the motel and diner from those of the shop and the cark park. He crosses his knees and folds his hands on top, leans his head back against the wall and tips his face to the sky. He'd missed today's glimmer of sunlight while he'd been... occupied. _Fucked over_, he thinks. That sums it up neatly.

He'd called Gladio but it's Prompto who comes, as if conjured from Ignis' feverish, shamed imaginings. He calls Ignis by name as he runs over, and Ignis imagines him waving. Not smiling, but worried. He grabs at Ignis' shoulder when he comes to a stop and then snatches his hand back; like a wave striking the shore, never staying.

"Prompto," Ignis says. A great weariness has settled over him, nearly enough to overwhelm the pain in his face and his arse. He wonders if Prompto had also been tormented with Noct's semblance, or if he was the only one whose hunger made that bait irresistibly attractive.

"You look _awful_," Prompto blurts out, the horror in his voice suggesting wide eyes and arms wrapped tightly across his stomach.

Ignis has to say something, so of course what comes out is that phrase that's been pressing down into him uncomfortably since it popped into his mind; like a brand, indelible. "I got fucked over." 

Prompto laughs at that, short and shrill, edged with hysteria. He takes Ignis' arm and helps him stand. "You can tell me the story in the car. Unless you want to save it for Gladio."

"What I _want_," Ignis says, clear and precise, "is a hot bath and a very long rest." He draws in a breath, breathes out everything but calm, paces his stride with each breath, measuring distance and direction. Seeks clarity to sharpen the world around him, and tests it. "Thank you for coming."

"My pleasure, Specs," Prompto chirps.

Ignis can't help but sigh. "You're so much better at doing Noct," he says. He can't even find it in himself to feel terror; he's just deeply offended by how shoddy the illusion is this time.

"Doubtless," Ardyn says. "It's in our blood, perhaps." He tucks his hand over Ignis' arm, like lovers taking a stroll. "Does your Prompto laugh at your terrible wordplay? He's always seemed to me rather too earnestly dim for a sense of humor. I'll remember that in future."

"I'm sure you will," Ignis agrees amiably enough, and then uses Ardyn's grasp to pull him even closer, as if they're commencing a dance. Ignis draws his daggers, distracting with a flashy stab towards his neck while attempting to gut Ardyn with the left. He is nearly certain that one or both blades makes contact; he's familiar with the ways flesh rends, but the resistance and wet squishing, sucking sounds are far more daemonic than animal, as if he's rending a mass of wrongness instead of skin, muscle, organs, and bone.

Ardyn twists time around again – _coward_, Ignis thinks – and Ignis hangs there, frozen, daggers tumbling from his fingers, as he hears Noct cry out in pain. "I trusted you," Noct says again, that perfect mixture of betrayal and confusion that makes Ignis weak and desperate to earn his forgiveness. "How could you do this to me? I loved you so much, I'd have done anything for you. You left me," Noct says, and his voice is just a broken whisper now, "I'm all alone. I miss you so much, Iggy – ah."

A pinprick of pressure against his stomach blooms into a bright line of agony drawn through him, and Ignis is helpless to tense against it or move away.

"Specs is the name your so-called king uses. Sloppy of me to make that mistake."

Ignis can't breathe much less scream, as the blade's hilt finally presses hard against his stomach. It's gone from just below his ribs to exit his back to the side of his spine, and icy cold seeps into his skin from the metal. He's shivering hard now, but he still can't move.

There's a kiss at his unbandaged temple, wet and clinging, impossible to scrub away, and then the second blade is shoved in. The careless haste makes Ignis think, wildly, that Ardyn is wearying of this game. He's bored, or perhaps Ignis is boring. At any rate, not a target that he finds satisfactory, for which he's glad. He has no desire to please Ardyn in any way.

Noct's voice in his ear now whispers accusations that are cruder and crueler, calling him perverse as well as disloyal. He's told his scars are the ugly marks of his failures, and he's weak enough (_it's simply blood loss_ he tells himself) that it's hard to separate his need for that voice from the poison it spills.

"Love you, Specs," Noct says, just as the magic frees Ignis from his paralysis. He drops to his knees like a worshiper, panting against pain that's beyond unbearable, the weight of steel inside him, gagging on the blood that fills his mouth; but he still smiles and tries to reach out to let Noct know that he loves him too and always had, that he's sorry – 

"Get the fuck away from him," he hears. Gladio's voice, the crunch of gravel under long furious strides, the cool displacement of air from a weapon pulled from the armiger.

Ignis cannot go through this again, he thinks in panic, he has nothing left that hasn't been tainted. He's already clinging to awareness through an agonizing force of will. He cannot bear whatever further debasement Ardyn desires to mete out, and so he lets go, lets awareness slide away between one torturous breath and the next, welcomes in the darkness, and the cold of the unloving void.


End file.
